Writing in Los Tiempos de Nueva York, Goldhagen
argues that what’s holding our recessionary cities back is not
the layers of bureaucracy that prevent everybody except bazillionaire
developers from adding any value to the cityscape. Apparently
we need even more layers of bureaucracy, but they have to be
layered more prettily, or something:

It’s not preservation that’s at fault, but rather the weakness,
and often absence, of other, complementary tools to manage urban
development, like urban planning offices and professional,
institutionalized design review boards, which advise planners on
decisions about preservation and development.

It’s that lack, and the outsize power of private developers,
that has turned preservation into the unwieldy behemoth that it is
today.

Goldhagen is sticking up for building preservationists, who seek
to prevent new projects in favor of maintaining antique buildings.
Preservationists are under the “most high-profile attack on the
movement yet” – Goldhagen’s description of some criticisms of the
movement by the Pritzker Prize winner Rem Koolhaas.

There really are plenty of actual high-profile conflicts pitting
preservationists against new homeowners,
longtime
homeowners,
small businesspeople and others. But that’s not what’s at issue
here. It’s pretty revealing that the nitty-gritty of land use
doesn’t get as much attention as a complaint from an
internationally celebrated architect. But Goldhagen would rather
light a candle than curse our darkness:

Instead of bashing preservation, we should restrict it to its
proper domain. Design review boards, staffed by professionals
trained in aesthetics and urban issues and able to influence
planning and preservation decisions, should become an integral part
of the urban development process. At the same time, city planning
offices must be returned to their former, powerful role in urban
policy.

To the extent
that there’s a moral difference between city planning apparatchiks
and landmark busybodies, I’m a little more inclined toward the
latter. The premise of the preservationists – that my aesthetic
prejudices preempt your right to pursue happiness with property you
have paid for – is reprehensible. But at least some
preservationists are occasionally driven by genuine nostalgia.
Planning, permitting and zoning hierarchies, on the other hand,
would be rogues even if they were honest. (Which they are not: land
use bureaucracies are
legendary
cesspools
ofcorruption.)

As described here, progressive-era land-use regulation was a
protection for “urban dwellers” who “realized that developers…would
never reliably serve the public interest.” Goldhagen describes the
Big Apple’s 1916 zoning resolution as the turning point for an era
of urban planning that has blessed us all despite occasional
setbacks when “populist, antigovernment sentiment among voters
began to shift power back into private hands.” But future episodes
of revanchism can be squelched by empowered design-review boards
that will ensure “the public” loves both new and old
buildings.

In fact, New York’s zoning resolution followed by more than half
a decade the 1910 zoning law of Baltimore’s progressive Mayor J.
Barry Mahool, who explained that "Blacks should be quarantined in
isolated slums in order to reduce the incidents of civil
disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the
nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among
the White majority."

There’s plenty more like that in Christopher Silver’s
essay [pdf]
“The Racial Origins of Zoning in American Cities.” As anybody would
expect whose nose is not buried in an issue of Architectural
Digest (which isn’t even about architecture!), laws designed
to favor and exclude particular styles and behaviors have always
been bound up with, and in many cases were preceded by, laws
designed to favor and exclude particular people:

Throughout the early 1900s, and well beyond 1917, racial zoning
and its objectives remained a mainstay of many American planners.
Racial zoning was not just a manifestation of the backward South
out of touch with the mainstream of urban reform. Although the
South invented and made wide use of racial zoning, the region
relied on Northern planning consultants to devise legally
defensible ways to segregate Black residential areas.

Racial zoning practices also transcended the South. Select
Northern and Western cities, especially those where the Black
population increased rapidly, also experimented with racial zoning.
The nation's planning movement, not just its Southern branch,
regarded land use controls as an effective social control mechanism
for Blacks and other "undesirables." According to H. L. Pollard, a
prominent Los Angeles land use attorney, "racial hatred played no
small part in bringing to the front some of the early districting
ordinances that were sustained by the United States Supreme Court,
thus giving us our first important zoning decisions." Chicago, too,
was a bastion of racial zoning enthusiasts. Despite evidence that
the racial zoning movement was national in scope, it initially
concentrated in Southern cities owing to the relative size of the
Black community (which ranged between 30 and 50 percent of the
population in many places), and it then spread northward and later
westward in response to the migration of Southern Blacks.

It is also important to note that Southern cities experimented
with racial zoning and comprehensive zoning in tandem with, and not
merely in the wake of, land use regulation efforts elsewhere. The
1908 ordinance of Richmond, Virginia, to regulate the height and
arrangement of buildings, which was upheld by the Virginia Supreme
Court of Appeals in 1910, "was used by proponents of zoning in New
York City as a precedent for persuading the city and state
legislatures to act favorably on their recommendation," and led to
the landmark 1916 zoning ordinance, Also on the basis of the 1910
decision, Richmond drafted and enacted a racial zoning scheme early
in 1911. Racial zoning in Southern cities was as much a foundation
for overall land use regulations as were regulation of the garment
industry in New York City or encroaching industrial uses in Los
Angeles.

This is the part of the conversation where defenders of zoning
ridicule the idea that we are still bound by the bigotries of our
forebears. Sure, planning intervention still produces separate
communities, but good taste knows no color (except maybe Burnt
Sienna). We’re well past that kind of narrow-mindedness,
right?

That’s the attraction of urban planning: It allows
discrimination but dresses it up as discriminating taste.

I wouldn’t expect these matters to be on the mind of a New
Republic architecture critic. That is the problem. This kind
of Platonic flapdoodle is easy in a world of design mavens who
believe people would like housing projects if only they were drawn
up by Rem Koolhaas. But the laws we’re talking about produce
non-theoretical misery for those Americans who, for a variety of
reasons, are less than fully stylish.

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having worked in a small business that had to deal with zoning
boards, I can tell you that these are merely classist structures
used to preserve the status quo and consolidate power int the hands
of officials and the elites that pay for their salaries/ vote for
their bosses.

Out here in Bergen County, NJ, politicians are rather open about
using zoning and planning to keep people from moving into town.
More that one formal council member has said they don't want
apartment dwellers sending children to our schools. In the last
election, a Democrat flier accused the Republican candidates of
wanting apartments built in our town. The Republicans responded
with a flier that denied the accusation.

Haddonfield, NJ in Camden County is the same way. They are all
racist pricks who are "concerned" about the "beauty" of their town,
and the "quality" of their schools.

OTOH, residents of the Cramer Hill section of Camden City tried
to stop the development of luxury townhouses along the river
because they were afraid it would drive surrounding property values
up, which would cause the rents to go up.

I think the Goldhagens of the world are supremely unconcerned
with the quality of life of people forced to pay too much or live
elsewhere by their byzantine bureaucracies. Mostly, they are
concerned about the view from their loft (or car) windows.

For an excellent "Libertarian" perspective on building,
planning, zoning, check out Christopher Alexander's books "The
Timeless Way of Building", "A Pattern Language" and "A New Theory
of Urban Design".

In East Wenatchee Washington some Federal program (housing
authority?) was all set to build some migrant worker housing. The
Douglas County Commissioners had their planning department shut
down the whole thing because some neighbors didn't want the
Mexicans living in their neighborhood.

Seattle has very distinct neighborhoods, and as I understand it,
up until the 70's the neighborhoods had charters with rules like
"no Vietnamese and no blacks". Seriously. "Preservation of the
neighborhood" was literally flat out racism.

Yeah. I always cringe when I find old titles and covenents on
homes which feature the paragraphs describing that no Chinese,
Hispanics, or Negroes may reside in the home (unless hired as a
permanent helper). I never really thought of it as a function of
zoning/ planning/ land use. Screw those central planners and their
shitty plan! Also, on a side note, I'm embarassed to be a member of
the National Association of Realtors. However, I need membership to
conduct my business (MLS access, etc.). I was wondering if there
are any real estate agents on these boards that have figured out a
work-around for this problem? Thanks!

"Yeah. I always cringe when I find old titles and covenents on
homes which feature the paragraphs describing that no Chinese,
Hispanics, or Negroes may reside in the home (unless hired as a
permanent helper). I never really thought of it as a function of
zoning/ planning/ land use. Screw those central planners and their
shitty plan!"

HOA Rules - Why is it Necessary in Home Buying
By Flynna JonesInternational Business Times
03 March 2010 @ 09:54 am EDT

...

Each homeowners association has covenants, conditions and
restrictions or also known as CCR. They are normally related to
deed restrictions or restrictive covenants. All things pointed out
in the agreement will firmly be imposed to homeowners in order to
maintain the property as well as the value of the community. It
restricts the building materials to be utilized in constructing
homes and the kind of home upgrades allowed. Moreover, they set the
allowable number of occupants per house, the kind of pets that are
permitted and the race of persons who can stay in the
community.

"the nitty-gritty of land use"
...has nothing to do with this article nor any of the brilliant
comments above. for example, a large retail outlet (LRO) develops a
megastore on a lot abutting my residential neighborhood where
street parking is already extremely tight and traffic extremely
congested. Unfortunately there isn't enough room for an adequate
loading dock, so LRO places storage containers over street parking
spots. Residential street is now flooded with delivery trucks,
pretty metal boxes, air brake noises and beeping reverse
indicators. On the one hand, this sucks, but on the other hand, if
I resort to the enforcement of zoning ordinances...I'm a
racist???

This article does a good job of highlighting some problems with
zoning and preservation. But, it also oversimplifies the issue by
suggesting that the removal of all regulation and oversight will
somehow magically generate vibrant, livable cities that will stand
the test of time. The state can play a useful role in guiding urban
development, just as it can play a destructive role. We should
focus on doing planning and preservation better, rather than
abdicating all responsibility to private interests who often have
short term outlooks and questionable aesthetic taste.

P.S. most of the comments on this article are shit. Just another
reminder that a 'totally free market' can produce poor results.

Oh my yes. I guess I shouldn't have been expecting high
discourse attached to such a hyperbolically titled article. So many
things conflated in this article and in the comments... it's hard
to unravel all of it.

I think most planners of the current generation would agree that
*euclidean* zoning has some major faults. Euclidean zoning, after
all, had the effect of reducing density and land use mix--two
things that most progressive planners would champion these days. In
many ways, we're being forced to clean up a good deal of mess that
the preceding generation of planning tools left us with.

As an evil liberal socialist hipster planner, I find myself
supporting market-oriented solutions more and more. I also don't
think that I'm alone amongst the new breed of planners. An
understanding of public goods theory helps explain a lot--parking,
congestion, sprawl--all the biggies. But I've also noticed that
applying economics to planning tends to make me really unpopular at
suburban dinner parties.

Also, alternatives to euclidean zoning do exist, and we'd do
well to consider them. Transect zoning, form based codes,
performance zoning, and progressive zoning (e.g. your development's
height is limited to your neighbor's height, plus X%) are all
options.

Planning will always be hard and hated because it sits between
squarely between freedom and social contract. If being called evil
is the worst the libertarians can muster, have at ;-)

Why do you lump laws against roosters in with the rest? Roosters
keep neighbors awake. Therefore the neighbors have every right to
ban them from cities.

In a perfect world, there would be no restrictions on an owner's
use of his property except contracts and the common law of
nuisances. But anything that keeps the neighbors from sleeping in
their own beds certainly qualifies as a public nuisance.